1. What have you learnt about technologies
from the process of constructing this
product?
2. We used www.blogger.com to post our work onto a blog that both
myself, Elliot, our teachers and our peers could view so that all our work
was in one place and presented in a professional way, it proved useful
as it meant we could easily look back on past work to use for research
when we were developing our opening.
On the blog we were able to embed prezi’s which were a useful way of
presenting work in a presentation format, we also used slide share in a
similar way.
How did you use the blog to work
collaboratively?
3. Another tool we used was web 2.0, we usedYouTube where we posted
all the videos we made, this way we could then embed them into the
blog and write a post about them with easy access to the video in the
same blog post.
YouTube was also useful when doing research as we were able to find
lots of videos of horror sequences that we were able to use for research
into our genre.
4. We used Elliot’s DSLR canon
camera to film our piece as it
produced HD footage, I had
never used it before filming to
had to learn to use it before
shooting but this wasn’t much
of an issue.
We used a tripod to ensure all
the shots were steady and it
also allowed us to get some
interesting angles and shoot
from different viewpoints in
our location.
How did you film your work?
5. I think the most effective use of equipment was
the track, it created a really smooth shot which
I think makes our whole piece look more
professional.We had one lighting issue in the
lair location because we were meant to be using
a red lamp to create a red glow in the room
however when we came to use it, it didn’t work
but to get around this we just shot in normal
light and then when it came to editing we put a
red filter over the shots.
Because we didn’t have access to the track on
our first shoot, it meant we had to shoot again,
however I think this was beneficial as it meant
we got a really good tracking shot and it also
meant we could redo some of the shots we
weren’t 100% happy with, to keep continuity
our actress wore the same costumes and had
the same hair and makeup in both shoots.
6. We used Adobe Premiere Elements 9.0 to edit our opening sequence; we
started by selecting all the appropriate footage onto the timeline and started
to roughly edit it to get an idea of timing and order of shots.
We went through more critically and cut the shots until we were happy with
them, we made sure our opening had continuity and that the shots were cut
on action, we also used time lapse to make some of the shots faster/slower so
they fit with the pace of the sequence.
How did you edit your piece?
After getting all the shots in
order we started to add the
titles, starting with the actors
followed by the crew and
producers and finally the
directors. At this stage we
also had added the red filter
over the scenes shot in the
lair.
7. Adding in sound effects really helped to add more of an atmosphere to
the sequence; however this was also the most challenging part of the
edit.We used Freesound for all our sound effects as well as some
recorded diegetic sound, when layering them sometimes the sound
would cut out or come in at the wrong time so we had to spend a lot of
time getting it right as well as selecting the right sounds for the scene
so we could make it as dramatic as possible and create lots of tension
and suspense.
Once sound was complete we went back over everything and refined it
by making some extra cuts to improve the cutting rate, we also added
some transitions between scenes to better link them together.